Marimaru

Ah, I totally get where you are coming from. It reminds me of this habit my mom has. If you call her on bad behavior, she'll deny it, and argue with you. But then she goes home and thinks about it. If she discovers you are right, she will change the behavior, but it is never brought up again. If you do bring something like this up, you have somehow remembered it wrong and it was never like that. My mom was always supportive of me being banded, but as an example, if she hadn't been, but then became supportive, she would deny ever having been unsupportive, you know? It sounds kind of like the same thing. If I was in your situation, and called my mom on your mom's behavior, she'd say things like "I just didn't know how it worked" or "I thought it was like the bypass" or even "I didn't say that". I wonder if anyone every truly understand their parents, lol

I think you should call your insurance and find out what they have to say about it. If you are almost 200 lbs above your ideal weight, than I would bet almost anything your BMI is above 40, which is usually the higher end of what insurance requires to cover the surgery. Check with them before you base anything off what the nurse says. Even if she's the "insurance person" at your docs office, she can't have memorized the requirements for every insurance carrier.

Dear Dad, I'm sorry that you can't look at yourself and see why my sister and I decided to look into your father's will after he passed away. I'm sorry that you said something to your sister that has made her believe that Sami and I had anything against her in this. I'm also sorry that you've decided that Sami had more to do with this than I did, and so decided that you wouldn't go to her wedding, but went to mine. You have no idea the guilt you've caused me regarding all of this, but one thing I do not feel guilty about is looking into that will. In a long list of reasons, the most recent is that you stole money out of your daughter's bank account. She called me to ask me to look at her online statement and tell her where her money was going and I had to tell her that our father was stealing from her. You are a dishonest person, and your lie worse to yourself than anyone else, as you refuse to see your own true nature, and you refuse to understand that YOUR issues, and YOUR nature cause you to be alone, not anything that anyone else has done. You're my father and I love you, but I don't trust you and I don't particularly like you all that much. Your Oldest Daughter. (thanks, it felt good to get that out too)

I'm glad you intent to talk to the doctor about his staff. Often times the doctors aren't aware that their staff is behaving badly until someone tells them. It's almost worse if this lady is being rude to you specifically (for whatever reason), and the idea that she thought she should CALL you to YELL AT YOU for being at a DOCTORS OFFICE when you were SICK just baffles the hell out of me. Honestly, if you're that worried about it, go work somewhere else where you don't have to deal with people all day.

I understand why you are so pissed. For me, it wouldn't be that the "trash can" was stolen, but more of a general "wtf" about the whole thing. Why the hell does someone need to steal a trashcan? Why wont the cops do anything about anything anymore? I hope it's just a one-off incident and you don't have anything else to worry about. Although I imagine you'll be making sure your car is locked and/or your purse isn't in it.

You are not a bad daughter. Mom's get plenty of "bad feelings" about their kids doing things, and as we get older, I think the whole thing turns around, and we get "bad feelings" about what our parents are going to do. And I totally understand all of your mixed emotions as well. Like travelgirl said, it seems as though your mom is using your success as her way to be convinced that she should do this, and when she eats ice cream and 'grilled chicken' (with all the toppings) and isn't losing as fast as she wants to be, she's somehow going to construe that you didn't tell her the secret behind it or something, or you didn't tell her there was real work involved, etc. Are they going to your doctor? If so, any chance you could get in with him and discuss your concerns? Not that you want to tell the doctor they shouldn't have it, but give him specific points that you think he needs to POUND into your parents heads as he does preop appointments. What has your mother said about the preop diet?

maybe you could take your dad out for coffee and just lay it all out for him again? Tell him you appreciate his concern, but that his constantly asking you is making you feel on the spot, and guilty. You should especially address his "2 bites" comments. And you should also address the idea that just because he paid for the surgery doesn't mean you're going to do it exactly the way he thinks you should..

I think the real lesson to take from this is that if people don't meet your requirements for printing, refuse the job, or tell them what the cost will be to fix their stuff. I don't know if anyone took the time to explain to these people that powerpoint just isn't going to print the way they want it to. I've had to explain similar issues to people where I work. Eventually I want to freelance, and this story will help re-enforce the idea that I need to be careful about 'free extras' like this. I'm sorry this got pulled on you. It's always the most offensive when you know you aren't that kind of person.

Since your daughter reported the incident, I think I would just sit on it. You could call the school and make sure they're aware of it, but since your daughter reported it, that would be kind of redundant, other than making sure that they are aware that you are aware. It could just be a one off incident, in which case it'd be better to not spend much energy on it. Also, if your daughter is friends (really friends) with the football players and such, they'd probably stick up for her if something really started to happen other than a screaming match. If your daughter was younger I'd say it would be better to jump at the chance to get envolved.

I know there is an issue with recording phone calls without telling someone, but I don't know about something that happens just on the street....

I dislike teachers who refuse to acknowledge that their students are individuals. Example; My 2nd grade teacher called my mother into a parent teacher conference to complain that I was goofing off in class. My mom was prepared for this. She brought in all of my graded test papers, where I had gone over the 0's on the paper so many times that there were holes on the paper; because I was done with the test and there was nothing for students to do who were done earlier than everyone else. The teacher refused to give me more challenging work. In contrast, my 5th grade teacher knew that not all of his students would be interested in the same books. He provided 3 or 4 books at a time that students could choose from instead of making the whole class read the same book. My reading level was already good, but it soared in his class. For other reasons I give this particular teacher a goodly amount of credit for saving me from my childhood in some ways. I'm not sure I ever thanked him in words, but I spent my afternoons after school in his class helping out, since middle school got out over an hour before elementary school.

Call the cops every time something comes up. If nothing else, it will build a case for harassment. The lawyer might not be able to do anything for you now, but I imagine that as you stack up calls to the cops, and video tapes, as the case may be, then you'll definitely have something to go after. Do any of your other neighbors have issues?

I'm 5' 6" and I started at 280, size 22/24, I'm between 195 and 210 (hovering a bit lately) and I'm a 14/16. When I'm at 195 I'm a solid 14.

The more and more I hear about the state of schools these days the more and more I am thinking about home school. I think you could fight the school on their jurisdiction off their property, certainly more easily than fighting something that happened AT the school.

My understanding is that the practice of suturing the stomach over the band has nothing to do with erosion and everything to do with slippage. It's to help keep the band where it's supposed to be on the stomach. I have read studies (although I don't keep these bookmarked) where this method significantly reduce slippage percentages.

I'm between 195 and 210 right now. When the scale is closer to 210, my backfat is worse. I think if I can stablize 195 and lose another 10 or 15 lbs, I'll be much happier with that area. Of course, My goal is 140, and when I get there, I imagine it'll look even better.

1 to 2 lbs per week is average, and is also the number for average healthy weight loss. You'll lose faster with bypass, but losing slower is arguably healthier.

School rules are getting ridiculous. The kids who start the fights don't give a crap that they are being suspended, while the kids who are getting picked on don't want to be suspended, and didn't do anything worth suspending THEM for (whether they fought back, or not). There are certainly cases of fights where both parties are at fault but they need to investigate it instead of taking this lazy route of just "suspend them all".

Ouch..... that sound painful...

Ha! When I read the title, I had no idea what you were talking about, but now I totally do! Awesome!

farrellduggan, You're within about 10 lbs of your goal... I think you should change your mindset a little bit. At this point, you're kind of like the average person with 10 or 15 lbs to deal with, you know?

Mine is about 4 inches to the left of my belly button and it's never caused me trouble there. Of course, I'm only a little over halfway to goal, so there's still some padding there...

Well, keep in mind that your body is probably reacting to stress the way it always did, just now with a band in place, having our stomach tissue swell in any way actually means something to us! It probably is the same reason (whatever that is) that some people get nauseous when they are upset.

Stress gets me bad... I got an unfill during a time of my life that was just all stress all the time because it was so bad.

You could always call and ask your doc to be sure. I wouldn't "chug" water, but I'm sure you could do more than 1 oz every 15 minutes. Just make sure each gulp of water isn't too big and you are probably fine. But, for how long did they say 1 oz of liquid every 15 minutes? If they gave you a time frame, you should stick to that. If not, I would call, because my guess would be they probably meant for the first 24 hours or something.